This post is the written version of the highlights of the video above.

You also would like to see Tao Devils post, discussing a really awesome idea for customisation in Gears of War 4, and hopefully you will love the idea and get behind the idea to help it become a reality in Gears of War 4 for us all to enjoy! 😀

When we talk about customisations for Gears of War 4, we wonder what will be planned for the game, rather than any official announcements. Recently a poll was run by Tao Devil, which helped to show which kind of customisation in Gears of War 4 would be the most popular.

So Character skins were the most popular. But is this what we will see in Gears of War 4?

So many questions to ask, and so many things to ponder about. We have done our best to break down a really good conversation between Tao Devil and Olaf on this video discussion shown above.

Lets do this.

Players want bulky armour.. but how do you balance that with hit box area?

The problems we have seen with some of the Halo character customisations is that the bulky armour increased the height or width of the character, and where players thought they could shoot an opponent by shooting their armour, the bullets in fact just went through the expanded region of the armour

Distraction problem, such as Gears Judgment. It just looks like you have a massive neon sign saying shoot here.

Too much choice, and Neon skins made it looked to crazy and made you light up and take away stealth from your game. Tao Devil talks about the immersion of the game and how it affects this. Having such a ridiculous skin takes away the individual differences between the characters.

We have costumed like Thrashball Cole, Big Rig Dizzy and other skins in Gears of War Ultimate Edition. Is that a bit too far in the world of Gears?

Tao Devil explains

I dont agree that each character should have 5 different variations. A lot of different variations of skins included, Classic Marcus, unarmoured marcus, Gears 3 Marcus… etc

Then in Gears 3, there were so many variations of the Dom character too, including a limited edition version of commando dom, and an almost impossibly different variation to distinguish in later DLC that arrived. And the amount of Cole variations such as Superstar Cole etc.

When talking about how to unlock characters, the video discussion then changes to a broad area of subjects about monetisation in unlocks, level progression unlocks.

What we dont want to see from the discussion is monetisation shortcuts. There shouldnt be unlocks that have shortcuts to be able to unlock them if you just pay for everything.

Olaf explains how he enjoyed Halo, where you could buy Voice packs, which was pretty good. Tao explains how this works in Halo, because the the anonymity of the character.. the spartan character where you cant really see his face. The Golden gear had a unique voice, and a unique character that was popular because it was unique. Sofia the Onyx Guard was a character that also stood out and had personality.

Tao Devil, then talks about customisation in Gears being difficult, because you have a person as a base, or template versus the blank canvas of Halo..

Now does this mean that having a blank canvas in Gears of War 4 online might be a pretty good idea? Where you can change the face, to match your own? and pick their armour etc. But would this take away from identifying the characters from the brand of Gears of War and their dialogue.. something to ponder.

Tao Devil then talks about how frequent someone might change their player in a blank canvas kind of mechanic, and once you have done with your character you are rarely going to change the character.. unless you have specifically earned a high ranked piece of armour or other unlock able that you want to add to your character.

Olaf, talks about the characters and the attention to detail that means how difficult one specific character is to unlock in Gears of War UE vs Gears of War 3. It took him two days straight to get Prescott, his favorite character of playing Bot matches, vs just getting to level 12 in UE to unlock him

The challenge of time is one that really sucked in Gears of War 3. Everything was really challenging but for the wrong reasons… time and play xxxx matches was incredibly boring.

The more popular opinion for unlocks was based around skill based unlocks, and again emphasis on excluding monetisation from unlocks.

The conversation changes to pickup weapons skins. So would we want to see weapon skins on the sniper for example and how would that work?

I think this would be a bit complicated, as each player would have to see something different, or it would load the skin on pickup, which is a bit clunky.

Would we want to see silly skins like we have seen recently with the Clown fish? Bacon?

These are really a bit too silly, and for Gears, it shouldnt take you far from what a Gears of War solider has available to them at any one time. Weapons such as a copper finished metal, or a platinum finished weapon, would be a better and more realistic subtle skin difference that matches the world of Gears of War.

We dont want to see silly skins, as it simply doesnt make any sense to the Gears of War universe.

and Animated skins?

There were 2 animated skins that we liked from Gears of War, the onyx skin and the liquid metal, although unrealistic. The two combined looked pretty cool as a matching pair, but in terms of creative direction it wasnt really appropriate for the series. Luckily the character skins in UE didnt get as far and armour was not an additional option.

The appeal of these skins is a little damaging to the franchise and how it looks to other gamers on the outside.

The overall immersion that each player has on their overall experience of the game, and the dark atmosphere of the game is easily ruined by bad armour skins from Gears of War Judgment for example.

You cant combine a world of extreme dark, horror and fighting monsters and grit with clown and peacock skins. Its just a bad mix, that shouldnt combine for Gears of War 4. An artist wouldnt paint a picture of a dark world, then have everyone in this world wearing clown outfits.. unless they were trying to get a message across about something and the contrast means something from an artistic stand point.. one skin that could be quite interesting and match Gears from Gears of War 3, could have been one of the dust people.. although again completely unrealistic, but at least the direction of the skin makes sense in the series!

The thread that Tao Devil talks about towards the end of the video is here, if you like his thoughts on the game, then show this thread, the video and this post some support and share these with other Gears players.

Talking about being a completionist vs being a specialist in Gears. Rewarding players for trying out other weapons, would be a good idea. But involving getting really skilled shots like double kills with the torque bow, to unlock a medal, or a skin variation.

Skill unlock such as 500 headshots, would unlock sniper goggles that can be added to your character to wear on the top of their head.

It should be really difficult to achieve, but also subtle variation, and force players to work towards it. Without boosting it, in order to learn.

I have always enjoyed playing Gears of War online, and enjoy helping others out too. Analysing gameplay and always improving and sharing my experience.
We have a useful Gears of War channel on Youtube. A big following on twitter in the Gears community and a friendly team. We are always welcoming new contributors so get in touch @x50_Spence